In a recent article published in the Las Cruces Bulletin, Christopher Erickson, Ph.D., a professor of economics at New Mexico State University concludes that after “50 Years, U.S. War on Poverty largely won.” Actually, the struggle against the effects of poverty has been waged for many centuries before President Johnson’s well known 1964 State of the Union address in which he declares “war on poverty,” Dr. Erickson makes a myopic and mistaken conclusion that poverty equates with the condition of “malnutrition”. The larger condition of “poverty” is a much more complex phenomenon than Dr. Erickson’s simplistic equation of “Poverty equals malnutrition.” Political declarations of war on the condition of poverty are at best rhetorical and skim the surface of what is required to act responsibly toward our neighbor in affliction. Two thousand years ago Jesus of Nazareth recognized that “ the poor will be with you always. (Matt 26:11) Christian tradition teaches its members that true